A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

The more widespread use of body cameras will make it easier for the American public to better understand how police officers do their jobs and under what circumstances they feel that it is necessary to resort to deadly force.

Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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Tag: regulatory state

Is Alaska Republican Senate nominee Joe Miller correct to suggest that the federal minimum wage is unconstitutional? And beyond that constitutional question, is this a wise political strategy?

My response:

Joe Miller is absolutely right: The federal government has no authority under the Constitution to set a minimum wage – or to do so many of the countless other things it does today. When Nancy Pelosi was asked where in the Constitution Congress was authorized to order Americans to buy health insurance, she responded, “Are you serious?” That’s a mark of how little America’s political elites today understand the document they take an oath to uphold.

James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist 45 that the powers of the new government would be “few and defined” – a far cry from today’s Leviathan. How did the change happen? In a nutshell, the ideas of the Progressives – in particular, wide-ranging rule by elites – were incorporated in “constitutional law” (not to be confused with the Constitution), not by constitutional amendment but by a cowed Supreme Court following Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous 1937 Court-packing scheme. That opened the floodgates to the modern redistributive and regulatory state that so many Americans love so much today. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s Rexford Tugwell, one of the principal architects of the New Deal, reflecting on his work some 30 years later: “To the extent that these new social virtues [i.e., New Deal policies] developed, they were tortured interpretations of a document [i.e., the Constitution] intended to prevent them.”

But that’s changing, if the Tea Party movement is any indication. The American people are waking up to the truth: The governmnet gives nothing that it doesn’t first take. It’s not Santa Claus. And whether the taking is in the form of money, property, or liberty, it comes to the same thing. So in answer to the question whether telling constitutional truths is wise political strategy, we’ll see. If the people can’t take the truth, it’s only a matter of time before we go the way of civilizations before us. Fortunately, we still have enough freedom to tell such truths.